Next a poem by a nobel winner no less, and one whose imagery I particularly enjoy. I hope you find her words as pleasing and vivid as I do.

Map – By Wisława Szymborska –

(Translated, from the Polish, by Clare Cavanagh.)

Flat as the table
it’s placed on.
Nothing moves beneath it
and it seeks no outlet.
Above—my human breath
creates no stirring air
and leaves its total surface
undisturbed.

Its plains, valleys are always green,
uplands, mountains are yellow and brown,
while seas, oceans remain a kindly blue
beside the tattered shores.

Everything here is small, near, accessible.
I can press volcanoes with my fingertip,
stroke the poles without thick mittens,
I can with a single glance
encompass every desert
with the river lying just beside it.

A few trees stand for ancient forests,
you couldn’t lose your way among them.

In the east and west,
above and below the equator—
quiet like pins dropping,
and in every black pinprick
people keep on living.
Mass graves and sudden ruins
are out of the picture.

Nations’ borders are barely visible
as if they wavered—to be or not.

I like maps, because they lie.
Because they give no access to the vicious truth.
Because great-heartedly, good-naturedly
they spread before me a world
not of this world.

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I’ve always loved maps, at every age have they spoken to me and whispered to me — enough to spin imaginary globes in my mind, then to find all those imaginary colors, everywhere.
Esme, thanks for introducing me to Wisława Szymborska, through her whispering poem 🙂

A digital display imprisons maps, confining them within the dimensions of the screen. Zooming in wipes away vast areas of Earth, zooming out diminishes focus. The journey becomes a netherworld that wipes away your home-start and then your destination as you blinder your way along. I call it a nightmare netherworld. The experience is akin to flipping the pages of a book with your nose, that’s what I think. So there! 🙂

Imprisons, yes, that’s right! It flattens them too, smoothing out all, as you say, to a bland netherworld. I’m laughing a lot at you reading through a book with your nose doing all the hard work here Bill, hahahaha.

Esme falling about and agreeing with Bill’s marvellous comment upon the Cloud

Yes, that’s why she says they lie; you are so distanced from the detail, the reality, yet there is a great beauty in zooming out and out and out, and it’s just as necessary to have both perspectives methinks.

I suspect your link is in refernce to the fact that Poland is interesting because its territory has changed so much over centuries, much of it seized by modern Russia and Germany, – perhaps you wonder if the poetess was in part thinking of this in fact?

Precisely. That gif is really interesting, insofar as it demonstrates how Poland has come in and out of existence, in differing times at different places. Poland is a concept. What we think of as the cells in our bodies are concepts.

Then it’s best to add the lengthy text as an extra in comments, but you only know they aren’t there if someone tells you, which is quite annoying. Then again, a spot of the abstract is always welcomed upon the Cloud. Thank you for the info Hairyrod.

It didn’t show up on the post, only in my admin Bill, so I’ve posted it under his comment and now I think on it shall post it into H’s comment itself as that’s where it should be. Thank you for letting me know.

Esme curtsying and smiling at him upon the Cloud as Professor Taboo tries to get a hold of his wild swinging bits.

“To be or not.” I love maps. But I also am amazed at borders. The need for them. The human need for containment of property has always vexed me, and I’m a property owner(!) As if someone could own a bit of Mother Earth. Happy just to steward for a bit. ❤

A beautiful poem, Esme. So much is washed away in our conceptual views of things… Thank you for curating it here.

I like to look at historical maps sometimes. They’re quite fascinating aren’t they? They reveal the psyche of a previous time, and for much of human history those maps sort of bled off the page since the world was not fully explored yet. It just kind of ended where the last person turned around and started walking or sailing back to where they came from. Those must have been interesting moments, turning around like that. Checking the sundials. “Well, it’s about midyear, the sun ain’t getting any higher than that… We better head back…” It would feel so arbitrary I would think… I can’t take even one more step into the unknown: right here, this spot, where that squirrel is standing upside down on that tree trunk, staring at me, I call this location “the End of the Known World…”